prèsvsPrezTell them apart

Quick tell: près is a adverb, Prez is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“près” is an adverb and “Prez” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#294
“près” frequency rank
#49,293
“Prez” frequency rank
49587
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature près Prez
Definition À petite distance, à proximité. Commune française, située dans le département des Ardennes.

Letter map: près vs Prez

Shared letters muted; letters that set près and Prez apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
près
4 ch
Prez

Grammar separator: près vs Prez

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: près is anadverb and Prezaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49587, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

près is recorded at frequency rank #294, classified as anadv, pronounced \pʁɛ\. Prez is at rank #49,293, tagged as aname.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 49587, this pair ranks #169,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of près vs Prez

Shared letters: pr. Private to "près": . Private to "Prez": ez.

"près" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "Prez" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Prezperz · pprez · prezz · prrez · prze · rpez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "près" for "Prez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "près" is an adverb and "Prez" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "près" or "Prez"?
"près" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #294 in our French list, against #49,293 for "Prez". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "près" and "Prez".

  • Full dictionary entry for "près" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Prez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #169,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "près" and "Prez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prep vs Prez". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #169,425 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list